Game designer Charles S. Roberts (b. 1930) died on August 20. Roberts designed Tactics, widely considered to be the first modern board wargame. In 1958, he founded the Avalon Hill Game Company, which produces games including D-Day, Stalingrad, Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg. His games inspired a generation of later designers, including Dungeons & Dragon’s co-creator Dave Arnason.

Astronaut William B. Lenoir (b. 1939) died on August 28. Lenoir joined the Astronaut Corps as part of Group 6 in 1967 as a scientist-astronaut. He flew his only mission in November 1982 as a mission specialist aboard Columbia flight STS-5, which was considered the first operational flight of the shuttle. Lenoir left NASA in 1984 after declining a space on a 1985 shuttle launch. He went on to work for Booz Allen Hamilton. He returned to NASA in 1989 as Associate Administrator for Space Flight and remained until 1992, when he again left for BAH, where he remained until his retirement in 2000.

In honor of the paperback release of C.F. Bentley’s Enigma, Phyllis Irene Radford (who wrote the book under the Bentley name) is giving away three copies of the book to random Book View Café readers. The drawing is open until September 1, 2010. Anyone (in the US) who wants to enter can send an email to contest@bookviewcafe.com with your name and street mail address.

The Pegasus Award nominations have been announced by Erica Neely. The Pegasus Awards are given out for excellence in filk and are presented at OVFF the weekend of October 22 in Worthington, Ohio. Anyone with an interest in filk may vote for the awards.

Best Song

“Gabriel Gray’s Song,” by Batya Wittenberg

“Here Be Cartographers,” by Ben Newman

“Small Designs,” by Barry Childs-Helton

“Take It Back,” by Kathleen Sloan

“A Thousand Ships,” by Katy Droege-Macdonald and Juliane Honisch

Best Classic Song

“Dragon For Sale,” by Ben Newman

“Fire in the Sky,” by Jordin Kare

“I Am Stardust,” by Lloyd Landa

“Ship of Stone,” by Don Simpson

“Will Ye Come Back Home?,” by Mike Richards

Best Performer

Play It With Moxie

Playing Rapunzel

S.J. Tucker

Sassafrass

Toyboat

Best Writer/Composer

Barry Childs-Helton

Heather Dale

W. Randy Hoffman

S.J. Tucker

Batya Wittenberg

Best Magic Song

“Die Puppen [The Dolls],” by Eva Van Daele-Hunt

“Like Their Feet Have Wings,” by Gwen Knighton

“Magnus Retail,” by Mary Crowell

“Pharmakoia,” by W. Randy Hoffman

“Where the Magic is Real,” by Paul Kwinn

Best Mad Science Song

“Dawn of the Day Before the Time of the Land the Lost Dinosaurs Forgot to Remember,” by Rand Bellavia/Adam English

The University of Otago Library in Dunedin, New Zealand, will be featuring an exhibit on Australian Pulp magazines from August 27 through December 10. The exhibit will focus on the pulp magazine industry that grew up in Australia after the government embargoed American-published pulp magazines, but will also include some of the American pulps to place the Australian magazines in context.

The nominations for the World Fantasy Awards, to be presented at this year’s World Fantasy Con in Columbus, Ohio, have been announced.

Novel

Blood of Ambrose, by James Enge

The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan

The City & The City, by China Miéville

Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer

In Great Waters, by Kit Whitfield

Novella

The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, by Kage Baker

“The Lion’s Den,” by Steven Duffy

The Night Cache, by Andy Duncan

“Sea-Hearts,” by Margo Lanagan

“Everland,” by Paul Witcover

Short Story

“I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said,” by Richard Bowes

“The Pelican Bar,” by Karen Joy Fowler

“A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, DPhil, MSc, or, A Lullaby,” by Helen Keeble

“Singing on a Star,” by Ellen Klages

“The Persistence of Memory, or This Space for Sale,” by Paul Park

“In Waiting,” by R.B. Russell

“Light on the Water,” by Genevieve Valentine

Anthology

Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow

Songs of The Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations, edited by Danel Olson

Eclipse Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940s to Now, edited by Peter Straub

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Collection

We Never Talk About My Brother, by Peter S. Beagle

Fugue State, by Brian Evenson

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

The Creative Arts Emmy Awards were presented on August 21. Most of these awards, given in 70 categories, are technical awards. The precede the Primetime Emmys, which will be announced on August 29. Winners of Creative Arts Emmys of genre interest are listed below.

Producer David L. Wolper (b. 1928) died on August 10. Wolper is best known as the producer of Roots, but also produced a television version of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon and the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Elaine Koster (b. 1940) died on August 10. Koster was president and publisher of Dutton/NAL before she founded her own literary agency in 1998. Koster published Stephen King’s “Richard Bachmann” novels, as well as Greg Iles and Peter Straub.